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Chelsea obviously won the pre-season sealed bids for Platini's hot and cold balls, handpicking their Champions League group, not for the first time. City's a bit tougher with Bayern and a trip to Moscow, but relatively routine compared to previous seasons and they should expect to qualify i think. United shouldn't have any trouble, though the Sociedad games could be decent. Celtic get the GoD, Arsenal get a bit of a rotter as well.

Some quite good sides bounced out of the Europa League - Braga, Feyenoord, Udinese, Stuttgart, etc, as Spurs and Swansea breeze through after routine first legs. Draw later.

Bayern v Chelsea tonight in what's effectively the European Charity Shield. Please spare a thought for AbsKelly, who i expect will be gutted at having to fly to another major European capital to see his team win more silverware.

Spurs sign a plodding Danish midfielder and a proper defensive unit.

Kaka bungs in a transfer request at Madrid.

Chelsea sign Jacques Songo'o on a one-year deal.

Moyesy continues to publically tap up Everton's best players.

Arsenal still threatening to sign Benzema and Ozil, despite both players stating they don't want to make the move.

Gaz Baz off to Everton on loan, City in for a £40m centre-half but not really.

but i wouldn't go underestimating CSKA or even Plzen, both have beaten bigger sides in Europe before now, and an easier draw doesn't really address the fact that City have comprehensively failed to adapt their game to European competition.

Would Chelsea, United or Arsenal qualify from that group - absolutely. Should City - yep. Will they - not 100% sure, but you'd like to think so. All it would take is one bad result against those "other two" for them to balls it up, though.

As for Arsenal, I'm taking the 'looking forward to it' line. One advantage of the group of death is that it should be more open because all the teams stand a good chance of taking points off all the others. The only potential whipping boy is...probably Arsenal :(

Some of them online, so y'know, take them with a pinch of salt, but stuff like the police confiscating passports, basically herding supporters straight to the Napoli ultras when they should've been getting them to the ground safely, people being seriously assaulted simply for being English, whether they were City fans or not, then i'm sure everyone's heard about the old buttock-slashing scooter lads.

Agree about Dortmund. Didn't go to the game but have visited the city. Really nice people, and a noticable lack of nobheads, unlike Munich, whose fans i've found a bit superior/nobheady. Unless you're a Schalke sympathiser, you'll be completely safe. That part of Germany's not particularly picturesque or interesting or anything, like, but if you're just going for the game, aye, i imagine it's well worth the experience.

I was asked to list Arsenal's strikers yesterday and I had forgotten about him.

*Spin Doctor Face* Get him fit and get him playing and he's talented (not as much as he think, obviously), but is by no means a solution and the fact that he has been mentioned positively for the first time this summer by Wenger now means that the chance of signing a new striker are pretty much done and dusted. Sigh.

Not in the sense that we'll actually be signing some brilliant striker obviously, just that at every press conference he seems to find new, ever more outlandish ways to send Arsenal fans into meltdown. At some point you have to conclede he's doing it on purpose.

hopefully they just keep stalling until the transfer window closes. It sounds like his heart's not in leaving though because he hasn't even put himself up for transfer for one thing. Maybe just testing the waters, stroking ego etc.

that the Champions League seeding gives no extra weight to more recent achievements within the span of the qualifying period. This means that with really tough teams amongst the allegedly weaker ones in Pots 3 and 4, that the effect is almost as though there is no seeding at all and therefore closer to a random draw.

It's mostly worked out OK for the English sides, apart from Arsenal who are just one spotty result away from the Europa League. Where, incidentally, I think they would do very well.

though probably not a wholly unfair system, i think that if we have to have any seedings at all (there shouldn't be, but i can see why it's commercially important to UEFA, and no-one could argue that the Champions League doesn't work very well as a brand) then they should simply be based on each club's performance in their domestic championship the previous season. As in, give each league a strength rating out of 5 or 10, then times their total points by that.

Must admit that i've not completely thought through this system, it may well be as flawed as the current one, i was just trying to work out a way to get Man City in Pot 1!

we had a load of amazing free transfers and loans. Regarding loans we had Nakata(!) Campo (though that turned itno a transfer), Bobic and Salva Ballesta (who was actually shit). We had Vincent Candela for a bit, too, but cant' remember if that was a loan or free.

But aye, that's not even mentioning the greats like Okocha, Djorkaeff, Hierro and N'Gotty. All free, all incredible.

It barely surprises me. It really does amaze you when you realise the imbalance between the global size, huge turnover of the club and the professionalism with which it's run. That goes right from the people making the big PR disasters right down to the people who run ticketing and turnstiles.

this is the place where no-mark clubs and oilball giants can tell us about the rising stars in their youth team so we can out-indie the guys in the pub by saying we knew them before they were famous, or deny all knowledge when they go the way of Quincy.

I actually went to the Arsenal v CSKA Moscow youth cup match. I can report that Arsenal have A LOT of very good but not that good tippy tappy lightweight attacking types. And it was really fucking cold.

Very talented player, great balance and one of those players who just does things elegantly and is good to watch.

Lingard excelled in pre-season but I can't see him making the grade unfortunately, would love to be proven wrong though as he's got a fantastic attitude.

Will Keane would have been part of the first-team squad last season but he did his cruciates and we signed RvP, it'll be interesting if he comes back as promising as he was. His brother Michael did well at Leicester last year and I'd like to see him go out on loan to a PL relegation battler to see how he gets on, potentially a very good CB.

us selling Denis Suarez to Barcelona and loaning Karim Rekik to Eindhoven more or less sums up our youth policy. Haven't been to see the ELITE DEVELOPMENT SQUAD in some time now but apparently Boyata trains with them, which doesn't bode well for him. If he can shake off the torrid last year he's had John Guidetti should eventually become a good, Premier League level striker, but not with us.

Welbeck, Kagawa and Young are probably the only ones I'd say, two of them are out of position and one of them is fucking shite and broken. One of the things that gives me the most confidence that he'll get a few games is how poorly stocked we are in the left-sided advanced midfield positions.

Palace probably have their best batch of youngsters about to break through. Being in the Premier League will probably mean they won't get many first time changes though.

Johnny Williams is already in our first team squad, and plays for the full Wales team and will be outstanding in my opinion.

However, Reisse Allassani will probably be best of this generation, in my opinion he will surpass both Moses and Zaha, Zaha come through into our team to replace Moses, and Allasani would have replaced Zaha if we hadn't gone up. He plays either up front of attacking midfield, as well as the wings.

Hiram Boeteng will also go on this big things, and beast of a defensive midfielder at just 17 and he made his debut last year.

Sullay Kaikai could also have a great career as an out and out striker.

Ryan Inniss is a centre back who captains England at his age group and made his debut on loan at Cheltenham vs West Ham this week. The Cheltenham manager said he was outstanding.

Another couple of our young defenders, Alex Wynter and Jerome Williams made their debuts in the cup at the weekend. Both who are very highly rated.

Then there is Jake Gray, he seems to get MOTM for our youth team most weeks.

Didn't know he'd been given a deal; excellent. Ex-Spurs, all the skill in the world; about 5'3", which is the reason he's at Charlton and not a Premiership club. He's my favourite of all our youth team.

Sounds like he had a bit of a rocky season last year, but the whole place was a bit of a mess with Bielsa going a bit nuts and Llorente sulking. Looks like a hell of a player and surely wouldn't cost much more than say, Lamela or Willian

the top clubs in Europe prove that the best way to get the players you want is to get your willy out and start waving it around. look at Madrid, £34m for Asirimendiwhateverhescalled, an £8m signing-on fee for Isco to stop him making his dream move to Man City, £86m for Bale when £60m would've probably done the job. no messing about. Barca do it as well, as do Bayern, and the billioballers.

If they spend all weekend negotiating with Everton and Fellaini and it collapses on Sunday night then there's only 24 hours to make deals with someone else from scratch. Have to just fire off a few enquiries now in the hope that some fall into place in time.

I dunno for sure but that's how I understand it. That guys a novice too, but you'd think someone would have taken him to one side and told him that making insultingly low bids and shouting about it to anyone who'll listen isn't the best strategy. We haven't been out of the overpaying for players game that long, surely.

to turn any discussion about Arsenal into a personal attack on Wenger is quite staggering. Really wouldn't be surprised if he became the media face of the 'Black Scarf Movement' who are a complete bunch of goons.

Is there a City equivalent? Does Terry Horlock slag off Abu Dhabi at any given opportunity?

He's a good egg, and about as pro-City as they come. Saw him at the Green Man pub before the FA Cup semi-final actually.

City's is probably a guy called Colin Schindler; a journalist who's earned a living from being a nay-saying miserablist.

Most of the more senior ex-players do as they're told nowadays, what with loads of jobs going in the corporate areas and that. To be honest, though, there's not a lot to slag off, really, is there - guy came in, said here, have £500m, win the league.

can imagine him laying out the entire Spurs team on Sunday with a hadouken or something. Or just standing by the tunnel with a huge wodge, and buying their entire first team cash in hand as they come out on pitch.

Was Golden Boot winner in Europe twice and Portugese Top Scorer 5 times in a row, but was only capped 10 times by Brazil due to their plethora of amazing strikers at the time.Once celebrated scoring a 35 yard volley into the top corner by shrugging his shoulders.

Ian Wright, Les Ferdinand and Robbie Fowler - three great strikers - got about 70 England caps between them. I know that's not exactly peanuts, but half of those are Wrighty's, and all three of them averaged 1 in 2 over their careers and much better than that in their prime. Imagine them being peripheral England squad players now? Any of them would be one of the first names on the sheet these days.

must have been that the management were big Champ Man addicts - he was always one of those players who was available, highly rated, moderately expensive, and, if you ever bought him, absolute fucking gash.

someone get a time machine and make this happen. Also film yourselves doing it: I'd also like to see a movie about a bunch of time travelling film makers trying to make an 80s straight to video sci-fi flick with an understandably confused Dennis Quaid.

would all depend on the deal. think its obvious now that our two targets from the start for the CM were Fellaini + Fabregas, and we genuinely though we could get them. Fellaini is from reports virtually agreed, and if Kaka is a stop gap then its not the end of the world. 2 year deal on agreeable wages, fair enough. 3+ year deal on Galactico wages, no thanks.

i'd be extremely cynical about the reasons behind it. he's pretty much the world's most famous footballer, even ahead of Messi and Ronaldo. commercially, it could be an extremely good deal for the club.

pretty sure people were whispering that he was past his best when City tried to sign him, though...and that was four years ago.

And the reason is because whenever there's a shoot-out he whispers to the physio *gareth...get the gloves* and marches silently and resolutely to relieve the keeper of his duties. That's how fucking brave he is